Archive for December 2011

Sew News on Facebook ran the 12 Days of Giveaways and I won the Day 3 giveaway. I won this book and it arrived yesterday.

Going through the book this afternoon, I can see some great gifts and fun projects. But the best thing is the help it gives readers in planning their makeover projects. I want to redo our bedroom and I am having trouble with the planning. While reading the planning steps, I came up with a different idea for arranging the furniture. That was a big breakthrough for me.

If you ‘LIKE’ Sew News on Facebook, they also have Friday giveaways. They always have something interesting.

But not this year. I am glad it is over. The final clean-up this morning should go fast. Laundry needs doing and for the first time in decades, I will be participating in Boxing Day/After Christmas Sales. My FIL gave me a $50 Gift Card for The Bay. With their sales today, I should be able to stretch that money a long way…or I will run screaming from the hordes. I’m not big on crowds.

I got the binding attachment for my Horizon 7700 for Christmas. Hopefully the store is open today so I can pick it up.

I made this top again, as a gift. I used a jersey with sparkly squares all over it. The pictures don’t do it justice. I even turned off the flash and it still washed out the color. So picture it very black with sparkles.

The neckline came out better this time around.

The fabric was hard to pin. Those little squares were very dense. I ended up using Wonder Clips. They worked great.

I inadvertantly killed my cellphone today by trying to charge it off my laptop. I wish I had gone with my first instinct and take the wall charger cable. I think I will wish I had bought the insurance they offered when I bought the phone.

This fall, it was suggested to me that I should have a hobby that did not have work associated with it. My Studio is great but it has to make some money and this takes some of the joy of sewing for myself out of it. So I dug out my Sweater Machine or knitting machine as it is referred to most often. I still have the invoice for it. I bought it in October 1998, off QVC during one of their hobby & craft days.

I remember having it set up back then, but apparently didn’t do much with it. This time, I tried it out by making scarves for the grandkids. They weren’t perfect but they will do the job in cold Montana.

The problem is it is set up in the Studio so not really good for downtime at home. A friend showed me the loom that she uses to make scarves.

It is portable and not to hard to do and has proven to be the relaxing activity I was looking for. I found it at WalMart. It also comes with a pink plastic needle but I have lost it.

I had bought some alpaca yarn in the last year. Alpaca doesn’t work in the knitting machine so I used it on this loom and I finished my first scarf today.

Again, it isn’t perfect but it is warm and cozy and very long. And yes, the one side of multi-color yarn is longer than the other. The one important thing I learned is that the way you hold it will dictate which side is knit and which side is purl. If you switch the direction you hold the loom each time you work on it, the knit/purl sides switch. Next time I will mark the one end so I can do it consistantly.

Now, I have nothing to work on until I can get to the store to get more yarn.

Congratulations to Anya! I was hoping she would win. I loved her final collection, especially the black and white pieces. I can’t believe she was a beginning sewer when the show started and that she put her collection together in two weeks. Phenominal!

I can’t wait until the DVD of this season comes out; Hopefully in just a month or two from now. I want to see this season the way it was meant to be seen because the international one hour version wasn’t very good. It really didn’t improve as the season went on either. So disappointing.

The good news is we are getting Project Runway All Stars starting in January. It airs January 5th in the States. Slice says it starts airing in January here in Canada. Is it too much to ask that it airs here at the same time as it does in the States? The schedule on Slice.ca does not cover the 5th yet and the show is not listed on the Shows listing either. A little more suspense for us.

It was a 2-fer for me tonight. I also correctly picked the winner of Iron Chef America: Super Chef’s. Congrats to Geoffrey Zakarian on being the Next Iron Chef!

I quit making a resolution to lose weight many years ago but I do make the odd resolution that helps me focus on bigger projects, that need doing.

For 2012, I am resolving to clean out the nooks and crannies of the house and collect things, for a garage sale, in one place. This one will keep me busy this winter when I am not working.

More important to this blog is my resolution to sew up the many unfinished or planned sewing projects. Some are garments and some are quilts. This will keep me busy for the winter, into the spring. Some of these garments have been on the drawing board for three or more years. My stash is not as big as some sewers have but it needs to be reduced by at least half and preferably three forths.

So yesterday I got started by making a simple curtain for the lobby of the Studio. We have a platformed area in the lobby that houses our mini-sewing museum. Unfortunately, there is a window looking into the office on the back wall. The office is not very attractive so that window has an unpleasant view. I have been wanting to make a curtain to block the view.

I dug out some sewing related cottons from my stash and picked a blue background with thread spools and zippers on it. I just barely had enough of the fabric to cover the window side to side, unshirred. The folded length was good so I hemmed the piece on all four sides. The fold from the bolt was fine so I sewed 1/2″ from the fold then again 3/4″ from first line of stitching, to form the casing. I should have done 1″ but I got it on. The samll tension rod was fitted to the window before putting the rod through the casing.